About Bariatric Surgery:
Bariatric surgery alters the digestive system by changing the size of your stomach, the length of your small intestine, or both. The goal is to limit how much food is eaten or absorbed. During the surgery, the stomach’s size is reduced, thus allowing the patient to only eat small meals. Part of the small intestine may also be bypassed. This makes the patient absorb less of the food that is eaten. These changes let the body use excess fat for energy. As a result of this excess weight is lost. For the surgery to work, a change in diet and lifestyle will have to occur. In most cases, the surgery is not reversible. So if considering surgery a potential patient should learn all that they can about the surgery before deciding to have it done.
The Procedures
There are many types of bariatric surgery procedures, which include restrictive, malabsorptive, and combined procedures. With a restrictive procedure, a portion of the stomach is used to create a small pouch. Sutures, staples, and/or bands are used to separate this pouch from the rest of the stomach.  The pouch holds less than a cup of food. As a result, you can only eat small amounts of food. Food passes slowly through a narrow opening at the bottom of the pouch, and is then digested normally. Restrictive procedures include vertical banded gastroplasty(VGB), and gastric banding. With a malabsorptive procedure, most of the small intestine is bypassed. Only a short section is left to absorb food. As a result, most of the food that is eaten is expelled as waste and not absorbed. For the procedure the stomach’s size is reduced with sutures or staples. The small intestine is divided and rearranged. This leaves a very short length of intestine that can absorb food. Malabsorptive procedures include Biliopancreatic Diversion (BPD) and Biliopancreatic Diversion with Duodenal Switch (BPD/DS). With both procedures combined, a small stomach pouch is created with sutures or staples. The new stomach holds less than a cup of food. A section of the small intestine is attached to the pouch. The shortened intestine absorbs less food than before. As a result, you eat less food and absorb less of the food that you eat.
 The most common combined procedure is Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass. In this procedure, the stomach is divided into two parts. The upper part is the small pouch that will receive the food. It is connected to the lower part of the small intestine, bypassing the upper part of the small intestine. This bypassed part is then reattached to the lower part, forming a "Y". This passage allows digestive juices to empty into the lower part of the small intestine where food is present.
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